Around Town: For a short time it was Occupy LCF

November 21, 2012|By Anita S. Brenner

On the second day of November, two busloads of Occupy L.A. protesters arrived in La Cañada Flintridge. Their destination: Commonwealth Avenue. Their target: the home of “a Deutsche Bank executive,” a sheriff’s spokesperson told the Valley Sun.

And then, we learned that the demonstration concerned “a Deutsche Bank executive.”

It turned out that it wasn’t just any Deutsche Bank executive, but a true local celebrity, Brian Mulligan, who filed a $50-million claim against the city of Los Angeles alleging that in May, he was imprisoned in a motel room by the Los Angeles Police Department and then beaten. In October, someone released an audio tape where a man purporting to be Mulligan called the Glendale police, asking about a helicopter that he said was following him. The man admitted using bath salts at least 20 times. Bath salts are a group of designer drugs that resemble Epsom salts.

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Public records show that Mulligan's residence is on Commonwealth Avenue. Here in La Cañada, the phrase “Brian Mulligan, a Deutsche Bank executive” is synonymous with the designer drug.

When folks heard that Occupy L.A. had come to Commonwealth Avenue, people thought, “Hey! Maybe Occupy L.A. is demonstrating about bath salts!”

Back on Foothill Boulevard, rumors began to swirl.

Was Occupy L.A. for or against bath salts? No one knew for sure.

Did Occupy L.A. have a position on bath salts? People searched the Internet to find out.

There is one reference online. The June 15 Occupy L.A. minutes ( occupylosangeles.org/minutes), record the following colloquy: “A Man: we talked about — it doesn't seem fair that they're selling all these bath salts…this guy…they're selling these things all over the place... ...[SKY: Just to clarify, they're not even bath salts they're selling them as bath salts]... ...and you don't need to organize to sell this stuff.”

You can read those minutes three times and glean nothing about Occupy L.A.’s position on bath salts. Are they for them? Against them? Mad about selling fake bath salts? It's totally unclear.